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Tech is Killing Street Food (theatlantic.com)
In San Francisco and Bangalore, street-vendor unions and nonprofits are helping informal food workers eke out a living -- but their future is still uncertain. From a report: Bangalore and the Bay Area have a lot in common. They are the tech centers of the world's second- and third-most-populous countries, respectively, and they both sometimes feel like they're bursting at the seams. Some economists argue that when tech companies move to cities with rigid housing markets, the value of real wages goes down as the cost of living jumps. [...] In both places, many street vendors are migrants -- Bangalore's come from other parts of India, while in the Bay Area many hail from Latin America. They and their livelihoods offer a warning about the fate of immigrant service labor in the tech economy: When space is at a premium, the high-profile, high-margin industries tend to take it up, while the low-paid, already precarious jobs that keep them humming are threatened.
Bangalore is full of food vendors like Sukumar N. T. According to Aditi Surie, a sociologist at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements who specializes in the gig economy, Bangalore has limited licensed areas for people to ply food, so "across income groups" in the city, "informal food vending is valuable to all." But near the International Tech Park Bangalore in Whitefield, you won't see street vendors. Plenty are stationed immediately outside the ITPB's gates, however, which has led to some tension. Earlier this year, The Times of India called the street vendors near the office park "a huge menace" because they impede ITPB employees' passage in and out of the complex. Whitefield "is really illogically planned," Vinay Sreenivasa told me from his dusty office. Sreenivasa is a member of both the Alternative Law Forum, a legal-advocacy organization, and Bengaluru Jilla Beedhi Vyaapari Sanghatanegala Okkuta, a street-vendor union. "They planned only for tech parks and hotels," he explained. "In a way, those [informal] livelihoods are created by the poor planning." That generally doesn't bother rank-and-file IT workers -- they need to eat, too -- but according to Sreenivasa, some managers and officials think that the informal businesses undermine the area's air of modern enterprise.
Back in California, some of the Bay Area's massive tech campuses have become mini cities, complete with their own closed food systems. This is an understandable move for companies in remote suburban enclaves, perhaps, but less so for urban headquarters, where abundant free or subsidized food can allow tech employees to avoid engaging with local restaurants or vendors. Some tech offices do hire small catering businesses. And companies such as Zendesk choose not to offer free food, to encourage their employees to frequent local businesses. But many technology headquarters isolate themselves from the local food culture, and the people whose livelihoods depend on it.
Bangalore is full of food vendors like Sukumar N. T. According to Aditi Surie, a sociologist at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements who specializes in the gig economy, Bangalore has limited licensed areas for people to ply food, so "across income groups" in the city, "informal food vending is valuable to all." But near the International Tech Park Bangalore in Whitefield, you won't see street vendors. Plenty are stationed immediately outside the ITPB's gates, however, which has led to some tension. Earlier this year, The Times of India called the street vendors near the office park "a huge menace" because they impede ITPB employees' passage in and out of the complex. Whitefield "is really illogically planned," Vinay Sreenivasa told me from his dusty office. Sreenivasa is a member of both the Alternative Law Forum, a legal-advocacy organization, and Bengaluru Jilla Beedhi Vyaapari Sanghatanegala Okkuta, a street-vendor union. "They planned only for tech parks and hotels," he explained. "In a way, those [informal] livelihoods are created by the poor planning." That generally doesn't bother rank-and-file IT workers -- they need to eat, too -- but according to Sreenivasa, some managers and officials think that the informal businesses undermine the area's air of modern enterprise.
Back in California, some of the Bay Area's massive tech campuses have become mini cities, complete with their own closed food systems. This is an understandable move for companies in remote suburban enclaves, perhaps, but less so for urban headquarters, where abundant free or subsidized food can allow tech employees to avoid engaging with local restaurants or vendors. Some tech offices do hire small catering businesses. And companies such as Zendesk choose not to offer free food, to encourage their employees to frequent local businesses. But many technology headquarters isolate themselves from the local food culture, and the people whose livelihoods depend on it.
After a forest burns they count birds. What they find typcially is like 80% of more loss of both birds and bird species. Sad. But not as sad as it sounds. The birds did not die. They moved. And while there was a huge ecosystem impact it wasn't like the birds were all killed off.
The street food vendors are not gone. THey just move to the next sweet spot in the food chain where there's an urban lower middle class that is being lifted up and is glad to have street vendors moving into their neighbor hoods finally.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Most people can't afford to eat in downtown SF restaurants. A "cheap" meal that isn't from a fast food chain is $15-$25. Sitting down will cost you significantly more. No one that values their health eats food from a street vendor, so I'll not include them.
The more likely explanation in San Francisco is that people are crapping on the sidewalk. There's nothing like the smell of human feces out in the sun to build up an appetite.
Good thing there are canteens in the affluent tech campuses, at least now we can begin to give the bus boys, bearers and waiters some decent wages, and treat them like human beings.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Tech isn't killing street food. If anything, it's the other way around.
Unless the tech companies have a cafeteria, the competition between packaged food versus a freshly-prepared meal is usually lopsided in favor of food that was cooked on the premises. I have seen a BBC Top Gear episode where the food is prepared and delivered by train or cab(and leave it to them to make the entire system incredibly efficient)
Our car-centric and towering cities and the inevitable sprawl would appear to be a challenge to them; why not outsource?
sorry - - - "them" refers to Indian workers; here is a copy-paste link to the 2011 Christmas episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNIDvr7NNwo
When Apple was planning the Infinite Loop Campus, the city (Cupertino) insisted Apple have on-site food service -- they were afraid of the traffic that would be caused by all those employees going off to forage for lunch over more or less the same period of time.
But now providing such services are unfair to local businesses?
I know, logically you can't have it both ways, but arguments such as this are seldom based in logic.
San Francisco : piles of shit in the street, street food popularity declines.
Bangalore : piles of shit in the street, street food popularity declines.
Who woulda thunk it?!
Alot of companies that have thousands of workers have internal cafeterias for the 3 meals a day for their employees who work 3 different shifts. Since shift break times are about 30 minutes to an hour, it helps to keep the employees inside the plant vs. trying to go out to eat and gets them back to work quicker. Especially if they get takeout at the cafeteria and bring it back to their desk to eat while continuing to work.
The cafeteria workers are contract workers to a company that specializes in this. Moreover, government contractors can satisfy the small biz requirement which doesn't compete with their core contract. The employees are happy since the food is cheaper than on the outside since the food is subsidized by the company the work for too which reduces the price.
The local street vendors I come across price things per pound which is about $8.00/pound, so it doesn't take very much to hit $20.00 of non-gourmet food not to mention $2-$3 for a cup of coffee too.
Cost of a meal at McDonalds: $10-$15, give or take depending on where you live.
Cost of a home-cooked meal: $1-$3, give or take depending on where you live.
Throw a few ingredients (water, oil, sugar, salt, flour, yeast) into a breadmaker, you have fresh bread when you get home. Takes just a minute.
Throw some simple ingredients (like baby carrots, water, sugar, meat, fruit) into a slow-cooker, and you have a meal that would cost $35 in a restaurant waiting for you when you get home. Again takes just a minute.
When money is tight, and the economy is collapsing, can you afford to pay 5-10 times as much for food? Food is one of our largest expenses! It's up there next to the mortgage or rent.
And what about being out sick with food poisoning from an uninspected street vendor?
From the company's perspective, what about folks talking over sensitive topics during lunch. Better to keep it inside!
All large corporate campuses ever have had this affect. "Street food" is not anything worthy of promotion or protection. On campus food service has been a thing for longer than the dipshit author of this article has been alive. The fact that it also happens in motherfucking California is meaningless.
Get this shit off Slashdot. I can't believe I wasted six sentences on such blithering idiocy.
Companies like Zendesk want to encourage people to be patrons of local businesses by not providing free food, eh?
Sounds an awful lot like sugar coating "feed your damn selves" to me, but what would I know.
dammit, I WAS TOLD that millenials were killing all businesses. Do you mean to tell me that I was MISINFORMED?!!!
For starters, Google, Facebook, eBay, and Apple aren't in San Fran, and I'm trying to think of any time in the last 45+ years I've ever seen real street food in the real San Francisco, apart from food trucks serving construction sites.
In my experience the street food scene, or I should really call it the food truck scene, is a fairly recent phenomena, and is pretty well organized in the bay area with regularly scheduled food truck fairs at convenient and well publicized locations.
I've been traveling to Bangalore for nearly ten years, and the street food scene there is very different, not the least of which is that all the street food in BLR is small push carts serving one or two things. There are no giant "roach coach" trucks serving broad menus. I suspect that most street food vendors in BLR are living on the margins of society and don't have much of a future. I'm not sure the same could be said about food truck operators in the bay area.
I suppose one of the real points of this article is to grouse about how Google and Facebook are killing the local restaurants in the cities Mountain View and Menlo Park and the neighboring cities. Google's cafeteria in BLR is reported to be very good too, but I don't imagine that it's harming the local restaurants; traffic is so bad most of my Indian colleagues don't usually leave the office for lunch anyway.
Shhhhh we want to project a good image and not worry people
They are. Even if it's cheaper AND easier to make food at home, they will still go out because #imafoodie means you have to Instagram or post from the latest popup restaurant or no one will like your posts and you'll die from the lack of affirmation.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
... who brings a lunch to work most days?
I guess I'm killing off the street food vendors as well... although I don't live in either San Francisco or Bangalore.
#DeleteChrome
but TFA makes it clear that in California the big corps are making "Company Towns" with their own kitchens. This is especially galling since those corps often get massive tax breaks with the assumption that they'll be lots and low skill service sector jobs to support them. Those jobs exist, but not directly inside the community proper. Instead they're clustered in the suburb where the company set up shop.
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You gotta be joking. I have been living there for about 20 years.
One of my pet hates is street food sold in restaurants! Why?! It's not even eaten in the street, let alone cooked there! The whole point is to eat cheap, tasty food in an interesting atmosphere - you usually get one of those three at most.
Online ordering was the biggest story in the restaurant business this year-- if you're running a restaurant, you either adapted to the trend or you went broke, probably. Unless you're Thomas Keller or somebody like that. I'm sure it's hurting the food vendors too.
The best part? If you want to have any online sales, you have to sign up with a monopoly like Grubhub, which takes a whopping 13.5% cut of each transaction (on average). Suddenly the food vendor, who is trying to lift himself above poverty level and is struggling with razor-thin margins, has to hand over 13.5% of his gross receipts to a Silicon Valley millionaire.
Yea, you aren't killing off street food vendors any more than you're killing off the homeless.
Reach harder, Slashdot. Maybe get some editors with brains.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Sorry to hurt the fragile egos and snow flake feelings, but you can't compare Elysium, er, *San Francisco* to any other place, it's a deusional bubble of a sandbox and probably America's biggest echo-chamber, and I guarantee you that nobody anywhere else gives a shit what anybody thinks or does there. The poop on the streets probably has more currency than this kind of nonsense, only someone in the Bay would be egotistical and insulated enough to make a proclamation like this piece's.
Iâ(TM)d completely support the idea of having alunch in the local restaurant in Paris or London. But in the Bay Area, or even Seattle or Boston, finding good and not a too expensive place to eat within walking distance from the office is an unlikely event. Best you can hope for is a sandwich from the street vendor, or in the cafe at best. Compare this with the in-office cafeteria with an inexpensive three-course meal, and the choice is clear.
If local businesses want to feed tech workers, the first thing to do is to start serving better food.
Why is this even a news story?
Hey miss mash, Please please PLEASE stop calling IT jobs "tech." Call them what they are: IT JOBS . A spoon is tech. A tractor is tech. A satellite is tech. Paper is tech.
Buffoons who have never been out of the bay area need to quit Cliff Clavin'ing terms like IT and tech. It's really annoying.
1. Wall off your factory, industrial park.
2. Build a canteen/cafeteria area as needed.
3. Have the best cooks with a food inspection program.
4. Healthy workers are productive workers.
Workers do not have to face the trash, crime and waste of the city outside.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Many of us prefer to work in a place that is clean and nice and high tech. We choose to work in places with good restaurants. This is great for business parks.
There are some of us that prefer to work in the city. Even in the city, I don't want to pay street food prices for food, so if I have to choose, I'll walk to the grocery store an get food.
There's no reason we need street vendors. In fact, craptiques should go away too. Ever walk through London and after turning right onto Oxford St. from Reagent St. you find yourself walking past one crap store after the next? Things like stores that sell overprices Chinese crap to tourists? They're an eyesore.
...strange street meets killing tech workers ;)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Back in California, some of the Bay Area's massive tech campuses have become mini cities, complete with their own closed food systems.
For some reason, this made me think of the design of modern web browsers. Instead of using and supporting existing resources, they're internally re-implementing what they need.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
San Francisco never had a "street food" scene, the likes of which you'd find in Thailand, Vietnam, or the like, in the first place. We never even had Singapore-style hawker centers; though SOMA StrEATs and Spark Social may come close. We had the Tamale Lady, Virginia Ramos, who literally died. And she was in the process of opening an actual restaurant when she passed. So she'd no longer have counted as street food anyway. We have the bacon-wrapped hot dog vendors, who are far from dead; but can easily be found all over the place. We had the guys who'd roam parks and street fairs selling edibles. And legalized pot put many of them, and not a few other drug dealers, out of business even when it was just "medical" and not recreational.
And then there are the food trucks. While they literally drive to their locations on the street, they, in no way, resemble "street food". Plus, they're thriving too. They're very popular and all over town. And there're even apps to help you find your favorite truck.
Imagine all the people...
Closing down street food vendors removes one of the few remaining ways to 'lift yourself up by your bootstraps" so touted by the right. McJobs ("would you like fries with that?") aren't going to do it, no matter how hard you work.
In grad school in Austin, back in metazoan epic (just post the insanity in Vietnam) I lunched at a Vietnamese boat-person's food cart. Huge egg-rolls, one would fill you up, the best I ever had, were $0.50. A couple years later, I returned to Austin and , having fond thoughts of those egg rolls, asked about her and was told she had opened a small restaurant on "The Drag" beside campus. Came back five years later to find she had opened a large, fancy, white-tablecloth restaurant on Town Lake.
Much as the right promotes "lift yourself up by your bootstraps" they do everything possible to avoid competition and prevent it. Social mobility has become much more difficult in the US than in Europe. Don't believe me? Look it up. (Not that there is any chance you will do so...)
Many, many large scale institution have their own cafeterias, often with partial or total subsidy of food costs. Universities do; many factories do; hospitals do; accountancy firm offices do; etc etc. I don't understand what makes it worse when it's a tech firm doing this.
Your idea is perfectly fine for suburban workers who want to work in a sterile, isolated corporate campus (you know, like all the ones rotting all over the country because companies found no one actually really likes working in them). Most of us who live in cities though actually want to be part of our cities, we don't want to be walled off from everyone else. If we wanted to live in the suburbs and work in a castle-like office park we would, but we dont want to.
The problem AC is that the city tax rates can no longer look after city streets.
The skilled and expensive tech workers face health risks and crime wondering around in a city for hours.
Skilled workers that then are too sick to work.
Then move to better much managed part of the USA?
The brand then has to attract people into that city.
What are the reviews of that part of the city? Parked RV, waste, trash and crime, tent cities? Taxes and housing costs?
Who wants to study for years and have no quality of life? While paying housing costs and new city taxes?
City governments demanding more in city tax, placing demands on the tech sector.
The solutions are
Gentrification around the tech sector.
To clean up the streets and allow city police to enforce laws.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"